Caucuses are precinct-level gatherings of voters that take place across Colorado. In 2018, the Republican caucuses will take place on Tuesday, March 6, at 7 pm.

What happens at the caucus?

Caucus-goers elect delegates and alternates to various assemblies. These can include county, state house, state senate, county ommission, state, congressional, and judicial assemblies. In some counties, caucus-goers elect delegates and alternates only to the county ssembly, and those delegates, in turn, elect delegates to the higher assemblies; in other counties, delegates to the higher assemblies are elected provisionally at the caucus and ratified at the county assembly. Read more …

Release the FISA Documents

The public deserves to see the full record on the FBI wiretap request.

Carter Page speaks with reporters following a day of questions from the House Intelligence Committee, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Nov. 2, 2017.PHOTO: J. SCOTT APPLEWHITE/ASSOCIATED PRESS

By The Editorial Board

Feb. 11, 2018 4:16 p.m. ET

President Trump Friday refused to declassify the Democratic memo on the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA), sending it back for negotiation with the Justice Department over intelligence sources and methods. This intelligence memo feud has become a frustrating political back and forth that needs to be trumped with more transparency.

Mr. Trump claimed in a tweet on Saturday that Democrats laid a trap with their 10-page memo, deliberately adding classified material that they knew “would have to be heavily redacted, whereupon they would blame the White House for lack of transparency.” That may be true, but it worked. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer quickly sent out a statement, “what is he hiding?”

Our sources say the Democratic memo—six pages longer than the GOP version released a week ago—has three main themes. The first argues for the credibility of Christopher Steele, the former British spy who compiled the dossier that the FBI used as the bulk of its justification for a wiretap on Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. The second is that the FBI had good reason to surveil Mr. Page, and third is that the GOP memo is partisan.

18 questions in 2018 about Russia and the FBI. The American people deserve answers…

Did the FBI pay Christopher Steele, author of the dossier?

Was the dossier the basis for securing FISA warrants to spy on Americans? And why won’t the FBI show Congress the FISA application?

When did the FBI get the complete dossier and who gave it to them? Dossier author Christopher Steele? Fusion GPS? Clinton campaign/DNC? Sen. McCain’s staffer?

Did the FBI validate and corroborate the dossier?

Did Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, or Bruce Orr work on the FISA application?

Why and how often did DOJ lawyer Bruce Orr meet with dossier author Christopher Steele during the 2016 campaign?

Why did DOJ lawyer Bruce Orr meet with Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson after the election? To get their story straight after their candidate Clinton lost? Or to double down and plan how they were going to go after President-elect Trump?

When and how did the FBI learn that DOJ lawyer Bruce Orr’s wife, Nellie Orr, worked for Fusion GPS? And what exactly was Nellie Orr’s role in putting together the dossier?

Why did the FBI release text messages between Peter Strzok and Lisa Page? Normally, ongoing investigation is reason not to make such information public.

And why did FBI release only 375/10,000+ texts? Were they the best? Worst? Or part of a broader strategy to focus attention away from something else? And when can Americans see the other 96% of texts?

Why did Lisa Page leave Mueller probe two weeks before Peter Strzok? This was two weeks before FBI and Special Counsel even knew about the texts.

Why did the intelligence community wait two months after the election to brief President-elect Trump on the dossier (January 6, 2017)? Why was James Comey selected to do the briefing?

Was the briefing done to “legitimize” the dossier? And who leaked the fact that the briefing was about the dossier?

The New York Times reported last week that George Popadopoulos’ loose lips were a catalyst for launching the Russia investigation. Was President-elect Trump briefed on this?

Why did Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson meet with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya before and after her meeting with Donald Trump Jr.?

Why was FBI General Counsel Jim Baker reassigned two weeks ago? Was he the source for the first story on the dossier by David Corn on October 31, 2016? Or was it someone else at the FBI?

Why won’t the FBI give Congress the documents it’s requesting?

And why would @SenSchumer, leader of the Democrat party, publicly warn President-elect Trump on Jan. 3, 2017 that when you mess with the “intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you?”

It doesn’t work that way in America. We are not ruled by unelected bureaucrats, police forces, or intelligence agencies. In America, We The People ELECT officials who govern.

Voters Increasingly Favor Democrats for Congress, New Poll Shows

Voters increasingly want Democrats to control Congress after the 2018 elections, according to a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll that offers several warning signs for the Republican Party.

Asked which party they prefer to lead Congress after next year’s midterms, 50% said the Democrats and 39% said Republicans. That 11-point lead is wider than the 7-point advantage Democrats held in October, and it is the first double-digit advantage for the party since late 2008, ahead of the Democrats’ win in the presidential election that year.

The poll also found that 59% of Democratic voters are showing the highest levels of interest in the coming midterms, compared with 49% of Republicans.

Pollsters who conducted the survey said that taken together, the two findings show that Democrats have an edge in enthusiasm at this early stage of the campaign.

At the same time, President Donald Trump’s job approval rating ticked up 3 percentage points in the new survey from October, to 41%, due in part to higher marks from members of his own party. Some 56% in the new poll disapproved of his job performance.

In the past, a Democratic advantage on the question of who should control Congress hasn’t translated into electoral gains unless the lead reached double digits. The party led by 10 percentage points on average in 2006, ahead of retaking control of the House and Senate that year, and it led by 14 points on average in 2008, when Democrats gained more than 20 House seats.

Smaller leads haven’t accompanied significant pickups in congressional elections, in part because of voter turnout among some Democratic groups is lower than among Republican groups, and due to congressional district lines that in many places favor Republicans.

It appears everybody wants to be governor — but where are the strong conservative constitutionalists lining up to be Colorado’s next attorney general?

For those not keeping track, there are 12 candidates currently elbow to elbow in the crowded race to be Colorado’s next governor. Don’t blink, that number could soon grow to 13 if Cynthia Coffman does as rumored and throws her teal-colored fedora into the race.

Checking the gubernatorial scorecard, that makes seven Republican hopefuls and zero teed-up to become Colorado’s next “top cop.”

In part, Coffman herself is responsible for the lack of Republican candidates on the field. Her delayed decision to run for re-election or for governor has kept the handful of qualified “right thinking” candidates sidelined. None want to appear mercenary enough to challenge an incumbent from the same party in a primary.

A recent report by Complete Colorado shows that the American Federation of Teachers is dropping $600,000 to take over the Douglas County School Board. This might be the most expensive school board race in the history of the state. AFT sent this money into an organization called Douglas Schools for Douglas Kids, which is sending mailers and posting online ads in support of Krista Holtzmann, Chris Schor, Anthony Graziano as well as ACLU plaintiff-in chief, Kevin Leung. The four union-backed candidates call themselves the CommUnity Slate and have denied union involvement from the outset.

These underhanded tactics are reminiscent of Jefferson County, where the “grassroots, parent-led organization” recalled three board members who did not support the union agenda. It was only after the election did the electorate discover that the union had funded the campaign to the tune of $285,000 (that we know of). This time, the union was more transparent; although, one has to wonder why given that Douglas County is more conservative than Jefferson County.

Nonetheless, caveat emptor. Buyer beware. There is a whole slate of candidates who are the beneficiaries of union dollars from AFT. And, don’t think that AFT isn’t going to ask for a favor in the future, particularly in the form of a collective bargaining agreement, which would likely net the union a million or two million dollars in dues each year. In that context, $600,000 is nothing.

Also, don’t forget that Randi Weingarten is the head of the AFT and Weingarten compared school choice to segregation, which is only the second worst thing that an AFT leader said. Albert Shanker, head of AFT until 1997, famously claimed that he would represent the interests of children when they started paying dues.

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